


but my pain grows, and my cries, and soon my vision darkens and my body goes numb and all his sounds disappear but his cries, and my mind shatters

by VeteranKlaus



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, M/M, Permanent Character Death, Suicide, sorry y'all, this isn't nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:28:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: Dave dies in Vietnam.Klaus never planned to leave without him.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Comments: 60
Kudos: 240
Collections: Finished faves





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is just pure angst bc I wanted to write something really sad, so have at it.  
> Might mess around with something to add onto this, but who knows.
> 
> Warnings in the end notes.

There is blood on his hands.

They’re coated in blood. So much of it. Deep, deep crimson, melting in all the grooves and callouses of his skin, seeping beneath his nails. It smells of copper, and ash, and dirt. 

There is blood on his hands.

It belongs to Dave. 

His hands are covered in Dave’s blood.

There had been so much of it.

It had just kept coming,

And coming,

And coming,

And coming.

Gushing out of him like a fucking river, watering the earth around them, seeping into the soil, glistening crimson and wet.

He had tried to stop it. He had tried to stop the flow of it, his trembling, trembling, trembling hands trying to cover the wound; the nasty tear straight through Dave’s body. He had tried to cover the torn skin; tried to hide that brutal thing from his view. Dave was gentle. He was strong, and steady, and gentle, and that horrible, horrible wound was so wrong, wrong, wrong on him, and he didn’t want to see it.

Instead, he had looked at his face.

From the corner of his lips trickled a trail of that sickly crimson red, and louder than the bursts of gunfire and exploding bombs, Klaus had heard the way it bubbled up in his throat and Dave choked and gurgled on it, drowning, fighting for air against his own body. It trickled down the side of his cheek, round the back of his head. 

Klaus had held his head close, cradled it. He couldn’t save Dave and he knew it.

_(He_

_Couldn’t_

_Save_

_Him)_

But maybe he could comfort him. Hold him close. Let him know he was there. That he loved him.

(He loved him so much.)

That he wasn’t alone. 

Klaus isn’t sure it worked. By the time he rolled Dave over, the light in his eyes was only because of the reflection of flames in his tears. His eyes didn’t focus on anything. Certainly not on Klaus. He was already going, going, gone.

A bullet had torn through him, and Klaus held him ( _my baby, my true love, my soul)_ as he slipped away, and Klaus ( _Yekirì Shelì, Ahuvì Shelì, Neshama Shelì_ ) couldn’t stop him from going; couldn’t save him; couldn’t say goodbye.

There’s blood on his hands.

So much blood. Like he dipped his hands right into a river. Like he killed Dave himself. 

His hands scratch at the explosion of pain in his own chest. His nails dig at his skin, a dog trying to reach bones, and it hurts, it hurts, god it hurts so bad. 

There’s something tying his ribs together, drawing them tighter, tighter, tighter, tighter, t i g h t e r. Threatening to squeeze him to death. His lungs are crushed; he can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. 

Dave’s dead. 

He’s dead.

He can’t be.

They had - they had plans. They were going to leave together. They were going to move on. Start a new chapter in their life, together. They were going to be happy. They were going to live - actually _live._

And now he’s - 

Oh. Oh, god.

Klaus’ hands crawl over his chest (it’s still bleeding, _it’s still bleeding-_ ) and up his face. He cradled his cheeks, and his body slots next to his on the shaking ground, two pieces of a puzzle, and he speaks.

“Please,” he says. The words crawl out of his tight throat, hoarse when they fall off his lips, swallowed whole by the air rippling with explosions. “Please, please, Dave - don’t - no - don’t do this.” It’s too late. “Dave, wake up - _wake up, Dave.”_ It’s too late. “ _Please-_ ”

He chokes (on blood) and makes a sound - a horrible sound, something he didn’t know he could make. 

His fingers run through Dave’s hair, something he’s done a hundred times before. Every other time, Dave had let out this content hum and tipped his head back into his hand a little. Sometimes he’d do it when Dave laid with his head in Klaus’ lap, and he’d be reading some book, and they’d have some precious time alone. Dave would tilt his head right back, and Klaus would lean over him and kiss him upside-down. 

Now he’s just quiet, and still, and gone, gone, gone. There’s blood on his lips. (There’s blood everywhere.)

He’s gone.

(Klaus couldn’t save him.)

(It doesn’t matter that they had plans. That they had a future - a future together. That they were excited, and in love, and hopeful. That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t bring him back. He’s still dead.)

He can’t imagine leaving his side. Can’t tear himself away. Can’t stop trying to coax him into waking up. Can’t stop begging him to come back.

And then, all of a sudden, he is being torn away from him.

A hand (bloody) curls into the back of his jacket, tears his apart from Dave’s side, and a black hole grows in the distance. The ground shakes and gives way beneath his feet, keeping him apart from Dave’s side. 

He fights to get back to Dave’s side. He’s all alone, there, in his own blood on the dirt. He’s alone. Klaus is abandoning him. Dave is gone. He’s getting further away.

This can’t be happening.

The world explodes around him and crumbles apart and all too soon, Dave is gone from his sight. Dave is gone, and Klaus left him. 

The world explodes in flames and ash and Klaus wishes it would all just swallow him whole.

They had plans. They were going to live together. They were going to get a small house away from everyone else; somewhere they could be alone, and have some peace and quiet, and be undisturbed. Where it could just be them and they could waste days away together in complete contentment. 

It was going to be good. It was going to be so good. 

“He’s gone!” Someone tells him, as if he doesn’t know that; as if that makes it any easier, any better; as if it stops the way the world caves in around him or how his chest caves in on itself and bares his bleeding heart to be torn into. 

Dave’s gone, and nothing else matters. The world stops and shatters, and their future crumbles apart into ash, scattered into the wind and lost as if it was never there in the first place, and Dave is _gone._

The world freezes like a record (one of Dave’s favourites) being suddenly caught and stopped, needle scratching a harsh line throughout it, scarring everything. 

Klaus lumbers on like a ghost, feeling dead on his feet, propelled only by autopilot. His mind blanks, and for a while, he just stops.

As if he can’t comprehend it any longer.

It’s dark. He hates the dark. Dave knows he does. 

They can hardly see as they all march away (leaving Dave so far behind.)

(Forgetting him. Abandoning him.)

(Why are they moving still? Why are they still going on? Don’t they get that Dave is gone? That nothing else matters? How can they just forget and leave him?)

His hands are sticky.

(And trembling, trembling, trembling.)

Covered in Dave’s blood.

(It’s everywhere.)

They had a life planned for them. 

They were going to spend the rest of their lives together; safe, and happy, and content.

They had plans, here or in 2019, together, because they were never going to leave one another.

Dave never had plans to leave Klaus. Klaus never had plans to leave Dave, no matter where or when they went.

He still doesn’t.

In the darkness, it is easy to slip away; to fall behind. Like a shadow, melting away into the darkness, that devouring black hole around him. Forgotten, like Dave. He falls away. Let’s the darkness take him wherever it wants; away away away.

When his mind comes back to life, Klaus is in the forest alone. (Alone, Dave’s gone, Dave left him - he left Dave.)

He sits down against a tree. His legs are sore; so tired, shaking. He almost falls. His whole body is shaking. Crumbling apart.

Dave is gone, and so is the future they planned. Klaus left him all alone. He could be scared, and hurting, and lost, because Klaus took the blood on his hands and left.

There’s nothing for him in 2019. Nothing but a life of drugs and running and fear. 

(He was always so scared, always running from everything; always running from himself.)

(It never worked.)

His siblings won’t miss him. They didn’t miss him. 

Ben might. Ben will blame himself for a while, and then he might be angry, and then he might just… go numb. Go to the light, maybe. Or stick around, alone (why does Klaus keep leaving people?) and afraid and confused. 

Klaus will find him again later, he supposes. Eventually. Or not.

It doesn’t really matter. Nothing does.

There’s blood on his hands; blood on his gun. 

It all belongs to Dave. It’s tacky and sticky, his fingers cling to the cool metal of his gun. (Dave taught him how to shoot it. He remembers the way he’d guided Klaus’ hands over it. How he’d lingered nearby, how he’d watched him; that glint in his eyes that wasn’t from gunfire and tears.)

Klaus’ head thumps against the muzzle. A cool circle digs into his hot skin. His body rocks, like some poor attempt at comforting himself; at soothing this burning agony all throughout him, body and soul. A part of him is missing, and he can’t live like this; like some gutted, hollowed out shell of a person. There’s a void in his veins and it just threatens to eat him from the inside out until there’s nothing left.

Dave is dead. Klaus never planned to leave Dave’s side, but he’s already gone far enough.

He won’t go further. 

The void inside him swallows up his doubts, his guilt, his hesitation. 

His finger sticks to the trigger (with Dave’s blood.)

He pulls it. 

Darkness bursts from his hollow chest and devours everything.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise second chapter!

It’s an odd feeling, being a ghost. 

Everything feels… muted, in a sense. Dulled. Like he’s underwater.

He can’t feel the humidity and heat that he felt moments ago - instead, he feels chilled to the core. He can’t feel the breeze that rustles the leaves on his skin. He can touch things, but when he does, it just feels… dulled. Everything just feels dulled.

Klaus can’t bring himself to care. He’s a bit preoccupied with staring at his own corpse.

He’s slumped over heavily, head drooping closer and closer to the ground, to the puddle of blood that pours through the hole in his skull. It hasn’t stopped bleeding yet. 

Klaus has seen a lot of gore, thanks to the ghosts; he’s pretty much desensitised to it all by now, but it’s different to see it on himself. He can’t help but grimace. He tries to ignore the bugs that have been drawn in due to the blood.

It’s quiet around him. The gunshot split the air (he assumes, he died before he could hear it and by the time he popped back up, he only caught a faint echo) and the jungle is eerily quiet, but not tense like he might have expected in a way. It feels as if it just let out a breath it was holding. It’s almost peaceful.

Klaus doesn’t know what to do. He isn’t sure what he expected.

He wasn’t thinking right, obviously. He hadn’t thought it through; hadn’t considered what might happen afterwards. If he would just… cease to exist, or go into some light, or if he’d come back as a ghost. He hadn’t thought about it, and he doesn’t know how to feel about it now. 

He just wants Dave. There’s still some phantom ache in his chest, still a void in his stomach, and Dave still isn’t around.

Klaus sinks down to the floor, leaning back against a tree, and watches blood drip, drip, drip from his forehead until he can feel it dripping down his own face rather than just watching it on his corpse. Time blurs, then. It’s almost like being high, missing time as the sun suddenly rises in the sky and then sinks back down again. The jungle lives and breathes around him, and he feels disconnected from it all.

He feels numb.

He wonders if this is what Ben feels like, or if this is just him. 

Ben. He wonders if he’ll see his brother again. Could he just let time drift away like this until he’s back in 2019? Could he seek out his brother’s presence like usual, bring him here or go right to him? He wonders how his brother would react to seeing him like this. Maybe he doesn’t want to know.

Maybe he’ll just be stuck here. Waiting, and waiting, and drifting. 

He should find Dave. That’s what he wants to do - needs to do. Dave - he won’t understand what’s happening. Klaus needs to help him.

He can’t find the energy to stand up. 

He should find Dave.

(Dave, with blood oozing out of his chest and flowing between Klaus’ fingers; Dave, with glossy, blind eyes reflecting explosions in his tears; Dave, dead, dead, dead-)

It’s peaceful, here. There are no ghosts (except for himself) and there’s no soldiers, no Viet Cong, no explosions, no gunfire. It’s just quiet. 

The sun rises again. He watches it crawl across the sky; remembers the suffocating heat he and his squad had to work and fight through; the feel of the humidity in the air; and he doesn’t feel it at all. He just feels cold.

Eventually, his body slumped over enough to fall onto the floor, all tense and oddly positioned, his gun still in his hand. He tries not to look at himself now - he just looks worse and worse, more truly dead, as time goes on, and as much as Klaus has always had odd reservations about death, he can’t help but be deeply disturbed at the sight of his own corpse.

The sun sets; the moon takes its place, and the sky glitters with stars. 

Dave taught him about the stars. 

(Dave is dead, now. Like himself.)

Klaus ought to find Dave. 

He stands up for the first time since sitting down however-long ago. His legs don’t ache. 

(His chest does. It won’t stop hurting.)

He doesn’t exactly know what to do. He starts off just by walking through the jungle, leaving his body behind (maybe his squad will find it. Maybe no one will. He doesn’t care.) 

He still has Dave’s dog tags like this, and eventually his hands make their way up of their own accord and hug the metal between them. He can feel the smooth lettering on the tags underneath the pad of his thumb, and it soothes him a little as he swipes his thumb along it. 

He needs Dave. Needs to be there for him (he wasn’t before and now he’s dead) and he needs to see him again; needs to hear his voice, and see his eyes without tears in them; needs to hold him again.

He wanders through the jungle, no fear of tripping up and twisting his ankle, no fear of having to try and manoeuvre his way through it at a running pace, dodging bullets and watching out for mines. It’s odd, being able to take his time around here.

The moon is still high in the sky, stars still hanging above his head, when Klaus finally steps outside of the jungle and onto an old dirt road. He takes a moment to look up at the night sky above himself, and he inhales, although he can’t really feel it, and he closes his eyes.

_ Dave,  _ he thinks.  _ Dave, Dave, Dave- _

There’s a tug somewhere within himself (hidden somewhere amongst the hollow ache and the endless void) and he opens his eyes at the sensation, just in time to watch a figure make their way towards him on the road, and he  _ knows. _

Dave’s eyes twinkle with stars in them rather than flames, and his lips aren’t stained with blood, and they turn upwards as he sees him.

_ “Dave,” _ he says, hardly a whisper, but Dave seems to hear him just fine.

“Hi,” he says, and god, Klaus wanted to hear his voice again, and it tugs the hollowness in his chest. He hurries forwards, until Dave is right there, right in front of him.

They stare at one another for a moment, for an eternity. 

Then the hesitation passes, and Klaus throws himself forwards. Dave catches him easily, and his arms wind around his waist and press against him, and his own arms wrap around his shoulders.

Dave is  _ right there. _

Dave is touching him, Dave is smiling at him, Dave is talking to him and his voice is calm and steady and there’s no blood (even if it’s always going to be on Klaus’ hands) and he’s  _ right there _ .

Klaus tries to say something, but all that comes out instead is some sort of sob. Dave’s hand presses down against his (cold) shoulder, presses them chest to chest, and Klaus buries his face into his shoulder and scrambles to compose himself.

When he can find his voice again, Klaus says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-”

“Shhh,” hushes Dave, stroking his hand down his back. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for-”

“You’re dead,” Klaus tells him, pulling his head back just to look at him, a rising sense of horror in his chest. Does he not know? Oh god, does he not know? Does Klaus have to help him through that realisation?

Dave smiles at him sadly, eyes crinkling, turned down. “I know, love,” he murmurs, and his fingers brush along the (cold) skin of his neck. “But that’s not your fault-”

“I should have done better,” Klaus states. “I could have - I should have-”

“Klaus, no.” Dave’s thumbs run along either side of his jaw, force him to meet his eyes. “No, Klaus. You couldn’t have done anything. It’s not your fault.”

“But-”

“Not your fault,” Dave insists. Klaus has no energy to fight him, not when he’s right here, not when he’s touching him like he is (and thank god ghosts can touch one another.) Klaus melts into the touch, feeling some odd sense of warmth mingle with the heaviness in his chest, and Dave smiles at him again, all fond and soft and gentle with him (like always.)

“But,” he continues, and Klaus opens his eyes (when did they close?) again. “Why are you here?”

Oh.

Klaus bites down on his bottom lip, suppressing a shudder. He can’t look Dave in the eye any longer, focusing instead on a swaying branch of a nearby tree. Dave squeezes his shoulder; ducks his head to try and catch his gaze.

“I couldn’t,” whispers Klaus.

“Klaus…”

“Not - not without you, Dave. I couldn’t do it. We were - we were going to leave. It was going to be good.” Klaus’ smile is a wobbly, sad thing, and he finally meets Dave’s eyes once more. Dave;s hand covers his cheek, and there’s a sad, sorry glint in his eyes.

“I know,” he murmurs. 

“I’m sorry.”

His head shakes once, twice. “Don’t be. I am.” His hands run down his arms until coming to his hands, and their fingers interlock. Klaus leans forwards, forehead (bloodless) resting against his chest. Dave’s chin props up on his head, and they stand there for a moment, under the night sky, (bloody) hand-in-hand.

Klaus doesn’t know what to expect from being dead, but Dave is here, and he doesn’t have that horrible, horrible, gaping wound tearing his chest apart, and that’s all he needs. Anything else can happen, but he’s content to accept this.

He can’t say he regrets what he did. He can’t imagine moving on, being haunted by Dave; can’t imagine growing old while Dave stays the same as he did the day he died; can’t imagine living while Dave is dead.

With Dave’s hands in his, he feels that warmth unravelling in his chest, chasing away the chill plaguing him and making everything else insignificant. It grows, and grows, and grows, not dissimilar to the void he had felt devouring himself before.

Klaus isn’t worried. 

Dave holds his hands, and he murmurs quiet, gentle things to him, and they’re together, and Klaus won’t leave him again, even if that comforting warmth promises to take them both away somewhere. 

He let’s it, so long as Dave stays with him. 

“I love you,” Klaus says, with his grip on the moment. He feels Dave squeeze his hands ; smile against his head.

“I love you too,” he repeats, no rasp, no gurgle to his voice, and Klaus savours the sound and lets it wash them away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments if you have any, thank you all <3  
> Would y’all be interested in the siblings finding out? More of this au? Feel free to let me know! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for: suicide, major character death.


End file.
